http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee 302 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 8 / 2016 «… (Deterrence) is best served when the attacker believes that his only al-ternative is a protracted war: The threat of a war of attrition is the bedrock of conventional deterrence’ • Using what is known as «asymmetric deterrence»41: the capability to respond with hostile actions in areas beyond the strictly military realm (support for terrorist movements, promotion of insurgencies in other states, actions in the economic field, etc.). • The development of sufficient military capability so as to be able to inflict a level of damage on a potential aggressor that cancels out the perceived «profita-bility » of an attack. The first of the three options can be developed using regular or irregular (insurrec-tion, guerilla warfare, terrorism, etc.) conventional means. The use of conventional military force requires being able to maintain a level of force that is capable of con-fronting the enemy and preventing a swift victory, thus giving rise to a lengthy and costly conflict (if the forces in question were capable of defeating the enemy, it would not be «deterrence by punishment», but «deterrence by denial»). In any event, when a weaker adversary confronts a more powerful one, the weaker one almost always swaps territory for time, that is to say, it protracts the conflict in exchange for the cession of territory through defensive operations. This situation harms relatively small states and compromises their economic base if industrially important areas are lost42. The threat of an insurgency can be a very effective deterrent (especially against the West, following the experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan), but it poses credibility problems: the adversary can always assume that it will secure internal support in the aggrieved state, which has sufficient measures to quash a possible insurgency 43 or, that, especially in the case of relatively rich countries, the local population will not be willing to suffer the consequences of this type of conflict44. In any event, this type of deterrence only works if the objectives of the potential aggressor include an invasion, which is a very extreme case in state relations. «Asymmetric deterrence» is rarely able to achieve decisive results, except in isolated cases. However, one (successful) example of this form of deterrence would be the case of North Korea: the risk of an implosion of the regime would plunge the country into chaos and lead to massive and uncontrolled emigration towards China and South 41 PAUL. Op. cit. p. 15. 42 GOLDSTEIN. Op. cit., p. 37. 43 Ibid, p. 36. 44 LUTTWAK, Edward N. Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 131-140.
REVISTA IEEE 8
To see the actual publication please follow the link above